The Boy in the Ragged Robes
by Norroen Dyrd
Summary: Son of a Thalmor, brother of a Thalmor, he abides by Nord customs, upholds the ideal of honour and strong kinship, bends his knees reverently at a shrine to Talos - and answers to a Nord name. The roots of this lie in his childhood.
1. My name is Baldr

_'You aren't with the Thalmor Embassy, are you? No, it can't be right...'_

_The Imperial soldier falters, his eyes darting from the record book in his hand to my face and back again, as if he appeals to this list of his in search of an answer why I lack the obligatory sleek, arrogant look of my kind. _

_I give him a reassuring smile, 'Oh no, sir, I am not with the Embassy. Far from it. You can be sure of that'._

_The captain glares at me - I wonder vaguely if this is the same look she gives her children when they are misbehaving at dinnertime, 'Speak only when you are spoken to, prisoner!'_

_The soldier makes a quiet sort of sheepish, apologetic sound - he must be afraid that his superior's attitude is not doing a lot of good to the image of the Empire, 'Uh... What is your name... I mean,' catching the captain's eye, he hurries to clear his throat as authoritatively as he can, 'State your name, prisoner'._

_My smile reaches it broadest, 'Baldr, sir. My name is Baldr'._

_He frowns, clearly taken aback, 'I warn you, prisoner, that providing false information will not do you any good'._

_'What makes you think it's false, sir?' I ask pleasantly, glancing out of the corner of my eye at the captain, who is now positively steaming with quiet rage - perhaps she is thinking that I am doing this on purpose, buying time for the Stormcloaks' grand escape or something of the sort._

_The soldier mumbles something incoherent about Baldr being a Nord name, not elven; I interrupt him in the same even, polite tone, 'Oh, but you may rest assured, sir, that this is the name I have been known under all my adult life. I have no other'._

_As a matter of fact, I am not being fully truthful; I was born Aurelion, but I discarded that name when I was eleven, under the circumstances which still live on in my heart but might seem totally irrelevant to any outsiders, especially to outsiders who are in the middle of deciding whether I am to go to the block or not... _

I can still remember the northern lights. A band of softest, finest silk stretched across the sky, a rainbow in the middle of the night, a spell cast by the mightiest sorcerer imaginable, they were the first sight of the kind I had ever witnessed in my life, and the most vivid impression I still have left of that long, excruciatingly monotonous journey to Skyrim, where our father had been appointed as Justiciar several months before and where he wanted us both to be, close by his side, learning the trade, so to speak. I was awestruck when I looked up from the carriage and saw the otherworldly glow high above me, and, quite naturally, frightfully over-excited. I remember fidgeting in my seat, at the risk of falling out, and tugging violently at the fur pelts in which my elder brother, languid and listless and utterly bored, had wrapped himself.

'Look, Lemmie, look! Isn't that grand?' I shouted right into his ear, pointing at the magically shimmering lights, which had just started to change their shade, as if especially to provide proof for my words.

'Yes, yes,' he replied with a yawn, swatting at me like at a bothersome gnat.

I have not yet managed to find out what he has grown up to be, but regardless of what he might look like now, in my mind he will always remain as I last remember him, a lank, snooty youth, immensely self-satisfied and patronizing towards those select few whom he deigned to notice at all... and - funny that such little details should remain stuck in my memory - proudly cherishing his very first chin hairs.

'Don't crawl about like that - you have mud on your boots, you will smear it all over the place. And for the last time, don't call me Lemmie! Our nursery days are long since over; I am here to help Father, and you are here to enrich your education by seeing with your own eyes how the might of the Thalmor triumphs over these primitive barbarians...'

I still know some of his lectures by heart... He had not been such a bad sort when both of us could be counted as boys, but being included into the adult world must have gotten to his head, and thus Lemmie, who used to sail toy boats with me and play hide-and-seek in the garden and tickle the soles of my feet to wake me up in the morning, turned into Ondolemar, reserved and solemn and haughty, and filled to the brim with long speeches on the subject of elven supremacy. But I digress; this story is not about my relationship with my brother, but about quite a few other things.

I never got Ondolemar to take a look - even one teeny-weeny little look, as I pleaded him - at the northern lights, and when he finally poked his head out of his furs, it was to say, 'Ah, the Embassy. We have finally arrived. Aurelion, straighten your clothes and brush your hair. You look like a human'.

Pouting, reluctant, I turned away from the sky to catch the first glimpse of the grey square building that was looming, shadow-like, ahead of us. I remember shuddering at the sight of the spiked fence that encircled its walls; as the Embassy drew nearer and nearer, the northern lights gradually faded away and large, soft snowflakes started falling from the darkening clouds. At the time I, with childish intuition, regarded it as a bad omen; years later, I am still of the same opinion.

Our father came to meet us at the gates, his tall, robed figure outlined sharply against the rapidly thickening snowy murk. I can still recollect the awkward feeling that stirred within me when I stumbled out of the carriage and trotted up to Father in Ondolemar's wake. I knew that I was supposed to be happy to see him, and partly I was, for I had missed him terribly, but the haunting sense of foreboding never left me; it gnawed at my heart while we were being introduced to stone-faced, hooded grown-ups and conducted along endless gloomy, winding corridors to what was to be our quarters. I can't really be sure, but I think it quite plausible that when, after an eternity of tossing and turning, I finally fell asleep, I had my old nightmare - the serenely blue waves lapping at my feet and mother's face looking up at me through the water, ghastly white and twisted almost beyond recognition, her eyes wide open and her long golden hair swaying in the gentle current like seaweed.

This vision would taint my sleep regularly throughout my boyhood, especially when I was ill or upset, and it still comes back to me every now and again - the only memory I have of my mother... As far as I understand, judging by those snatches of grown-up talk that I would manage to overhear and understand as a child, she was constantly plagued by the voices of humans she had killed as a battlemage in the Great War; over the years, her condition steadily grew worse and worse, and when I was three, she could stand listening to those voices no longer and escaped from them into the blue stillness of the bay into which the terrace of our house opened... And I was the one to discover her body... But yet again - that is rather beside the point.

'Lemmie, I am bored...'

'What? Oh, Aurelion, can't you see that I am busy? Go outside and play, will you?'

'But it's snowing outside!'

'Well, then, read a book or something!'

'I've already read all the books Father gave me... And he won't let me read anything else! Please... Can we at least play hide-and-seek? This place has plenty of dark corners to hide in! Please, Lemmie...'

'I told you I am busy! Go bother someone else! And _don't call me Lemmie_!'

A dialogue of this kind was the common conclusion of my evenings at the Embassy. I would spend hours on end loafing around, physically sick of the oppressive atmosphere of the place, getting into the grown-ups' way and constantly ending up in rooms I wasn't supposed to enter and corridors I wasn't supposed to turn into. At times I would venture into the frozen world beyond the Embassy walls, but I was not allowed to stir out of the gates into the wilderness, and my single attempt to sneak off in what I believed to be the direction of Solitude resulted in a scandal. So, quite naturally, caged in a bleak new world I could barely understand, by the end of the day I would feel so utterly miserable that I just had to find Father or Ondolemar and whine for entertainment.

At times, they did try to keep me occupied somehow, by showing me around the Embassy or giving me books to read, but I felt even more averted to the things they showed me than to simply doing nothing. I never could grasp the thrill of elven supremacy; humans, beastfolk and the so-called 'lesser mer' fascinated me, and I wanted to learn more about them beyond the fact that they were species inferior to us. Something inside my mind, persistent like a throbbing sore, kept telling me that my father and brother were wrong, but at the age of eleven I just did not have any arguments to oppose them. When they finally saw that I was not in the least bit interested in what they were doing, they took to ushering me out of the room whenever I appeared with my pleas to be relieved of my ever-present boredom.

And so it came to be that one day I yet again found myself wandering aimlessly, bored, neglected, along the countless identical passageways, climbing up and down flights of steps and trying to turn one door handle after another, not missing a single one, not so much out of curiosity as to give myself something to do. I did not expect any of those doors to be open, so I leapt back, startled, when one of them gave way to my listless tug and slowly creaked ajar.

What I saw inside, when I finally plucked up enough courage to poke my head through the gap that had appeared, looked much like the places out of which I had previously been shooed by angry adults: a chair and a writing desk in the front, smaller part, separated from the rest of the room by a row of thick icon bars, fastened to the floor to form a sort of makeshift cage, full of rotting straw and dirty rags and chains and other unpleasant things. When I stumbled upon one of such rooms before, there had always been a grown-up inside, sitting at the desk and scribbling something on a roll of parchment, glancing up every now and then at whatever there was in the darkest, farthest corner of the cage that I would always be prevented from seeing. But this time, for reasons which I never bothered to delve into, the desk was unoccupied. And it is only too natural that I suddenly felt myself bold enough to step inside and settle myself in the chair, pulling an imaginary hood over my face and mimicking an adult the best I could. But my little game did not last long, for when I peered more closely inside the cage, I whizzed up with a little terrified squeak. There was something stirring in the darkness.

Or rather, someone - a boy about my age, most likely a Nord, judging from his blonde hair, long and unkempt, and grey eyes, surrounded by dark circles and looking almost unnaturally enormous on his pale, hollow-cheeked face. He wore a ragged robe made out of some kind of crude sacking, and his limbs were so thin and frail that I felt terrified looking at him. He stared at me, not making a sound, like one of the little wild animals that I used to drag home from the wilds and try to tame, and as I came closer, I could see a vein pulsing frantically on his long, bird-like neck.

I pressed my face against two of the cage bars, not too sure what to do next; the boy kept staring at me, his expression horrified and at the same time incredulous.

Finally, he parted his lips and said, in a hoarse half-whisper, 'You are an elf'.

I nodded, feeling a bit awkward; coming from him, it sounded almost like an accusation.

'But you are a kid,' the boy went on, his voice gradually getting louder and firmer, 'There ain't no such thing as an elf kid'.

'Yes, there is!' I protested vehemently.

The boy did not appear to be too convinced; he shook his head as determinedly as his strength could allow him, 'There ain't no way someone as mean as that could be little. Ever'.

Stung as I was, there was nothing I could possibly say to defend my people; and the more I mulled over the boy's words, the more truthful they seemed to me.

Finally, I managed to produce some sort of reply along the lines of, 'Well, I am not like that. I will go and ask my father to let you out of this horrible place so we can play together!'

The boy smiled, with such unchildlike bitterness that I felt like bursting into tears, 'They won't let me out, oh no. Not until my Da tells them where our folks gathered to pray to Talos. And he'll never tell them, he won't,' his eyes lit up with a strange fire the likes of which I had never seen before, 'Because he is a true son of Skyrim! The elves said that if he won't talk, they'll starve me to death. And I am ready to starve, for my Da and for Talos! I sure hope Shor will let me into Sovngarde for that... Cause if he does, I will get to meet my Granda, and my Uncle... And Ysgramor!'

He concluded his speech by hitting the floor of the cage with his tiny, bony fist.

A little stupefied by the sudden torrent of unfamiliar names, I exclaimed, 'I don't know what this Sovngarde place is, but if to get there you must starve, I won't let you! I will bring you some food and things, and...'

He snorted, rather feebly, but still, 'Fat chance you're gonna find this here door open again! They lock it up at night, and at daytime there's always an elf hanging about'.

'I will creep in here when everyone's asleep! I know a Khajiit servant who has lockpicks; I will borrow them and pick the lock!'

The boy, apparently impressed with my persistence, cocked his head to one side curiously and asked, his tone suddenly much friendlier, 'What's your name?'

'Aurelion,' I replied, 'What's yours?'

'Baldr. My name is Baldr'.


	2. The story game

It was my first ever attempt at blackmail, and I felt terrible, taking advantage of the old Khajiit's guilty secret and fear of being discovered. I had bumped into him by sheer accident - so many things have been happening to me by sheer accident ever since I was small that I am beginning to wonder whether they really are accidental - while I was stumbling along some dimly lit corridor, in the dead of night, woken yet again by the haunting vision of my mother and seeking out my father or Ondolemar, longing for the reserved, almost reluctant comfort they would give me at times like this. I can still picture the Khajiit's face as he staggered to his feet from his crouching pose by a tall, bulky wardrobe, which had had been busily emptying when I tripped over his tail; I can still see him stuffing his lockpicks back into his pocket with trembling hands - ears pressed back, eyes widened with blank terror, mouth sagging in a most piteous way.

'Please, young master!' he had breathed chokingly, grabbing me above the elbow, the desperate strength of his grip making me wince and blink off tears, 'Dro'Bakhar only takes small things, tiny things, things that will not be missed! Dro'Bakhar is in debt, and if he doesn't steal, people will come for him - bad, bad people! Please, please, don't tell anyone you saw Dro'Bakhar - especially your most esteemed father!'

At the time I had just nodded in silent impatience, wriggled out of the Khajiit's grasp and hurried off back to my room, my only wish being to forget the whole thing as soon as possible. It had never occurred to me that I could use this suddenly acquired knowledge for my own personal gain - and yet now I found myself doing just that.

'Dro'Bakhar...' I began sheepishly, hovering behind his back while he was doing some chore or other, 'Could you... That is... If you don't mind... I'd like to...' I glanced around to check that we were alone and lowered my voice dramatically, 'I'd like to borrow one of your lockpicks... Or I... Or I will tell everything to Father!'

That last part, which I blurted out as fast as I could, my throat contracting with physical repulsion, sounded forced and unnatural, but I suppose Dro'Bakhar was too frightened to notice how I really felt. With a small, nervous laugh, he fumbled about in the folds of his baggy garments and thrust something thin and hard into my hand, 'There. Anything for Dro'Bakhar's little friend!'

His expression stirred deep within me a wild urge to throw my arms around him and tell him I was sorry, so very, very sorry... But I restrained myself and made do with a feeble, inadequate 'Thank you'.

I have never been the one for stealth, bursting clumsily even into those places that should be entered discreetly; I like to excuse myself with the thought that that one night must have lasted me a lifetime.

Hands clammy with cold sweat, throat parched, limbs growing numb at every sudden noise, I moved slowly, pressing myself against the wall and trembling all over, for I was sure that the throbbing in my ears and the sound of my heart, which was pounding where it shouldn't be, somewhere between my collar bones, were quite enough to wake up the whole Embassy. As I recollect, it was more than once that I had to freeze in an awkward posture, holding my breath till my eyes started streaming with silent, burning tears, in order to remain unnoticed by patrolling guards.

The passageways I crawled along in an attempt to retrace my steps on the previous day, when I had met Baldr, were so dark that it hurt me to look around, and I didn't dare use the little magic I knew to light my way, so when I reached the place that seemed vaguely familiar to my aching eyes - on my way back from Baldr's cell I had tried to take note of anything that could pass as a landmark - I had to grope around for the door, praying to all the gods I had been taught to worship that it would turn out to be one I needed.

When the fingers of my uncontrollably shaking left hand finally closed in round the door handle, I took out the lockpick with my right hand, inserted it in the keyhole and began to slowly, falteringly rotate this thin, frail little bit of metal, each of its soft clicks echoing tenfold in my mind.

The pick broke the very second the lock slid open. My heart sank; if this was not the right room, then any chance to smuggle food to Baldr was lost forever, for I would never bring myself to ask Dro'Bakhar for another lockpick. Screwing up my eyes in terror as the door creaked at my feeble push, I tiptoed inside and after an eternity of listening to silence, forced myself to tear my eyelids open.

The room was illuminated by a faintly shimmering beam of moonlight coming through the tiny window; its soft silverness made the shadowy corners all the more dark and menacing, like gaping mouths of some unknown, ravenous creatures. I could barely discern the outline of a desk and the cage bars - but the cage itself seemed empty. Had I chosen the wrong door after all? This suspicion paralyzed me; glued to the floor, unable to stir further into the room to investigate, I gave in to a fit of desperate, choked sobbing.

'Psst!' came a hissing whisper from the pitch blackness ahead of me, 'Stop your wailing! They will hear you!'

It was Baldr's voice, without a doubt; dazed by overwhelming relief, I stumbled forward, arms outstretched, and dropped down to my knees in front of the cage. Baldr edged closer to me, emerging suddenly from beyond the veil of darkness that had been concealing him, and poked his bony arm between the bars, finding my fingers and pressing them as a greeting.

'Don't be such a milk drinker,' he whispered sternly.

I gave a small, guilty sniff and handed him the tightly wrapped bundle I had been concealing beneath my night clothes.

'Here. For you,' I said simply.

With a silent but strenuous joint effort, me pushing and Baldr pulling, we managed to squeeze the precious package through the bars. He fumbled a little with all my protective knots and, peeling off layer after layer of cloth, peered at the contents as they slowly emerged, dark and shapeless against the cold glow of the moon.

It wasn't much, as I hadn't dared to carry off more - and besides, I had read somewhere that you shouldn't give half-starved people a lot of food at once - but it turned out to be more than enough for Baldr. His voice, raised to a tone far higher than his previous cautious whisper, rang with the crystal-clear laughter of joy when he thanked me, again and again, for my humble half a loaf of bread with raisins and a couple of boiled cream treats. But what fascinated him most was a handful of chocolate candy that lay at the very bottom of the bundle - this, as he said to me breathlessly, amazed, wondering, turning each dainty over in his hands to take a good look at it by the light of the moon beam, was something that he was tasting for the first time in his life. When Baldr finished munching and swallowing and making various muffled noises of approval, I pressed the palms of my hands against the hard, cold floor, preparing to lift myself from my knees.

'Are you leaving already?' he asked, startled.

'Yeah... I have nightmares, see... So my father and brother sometimes come over from their quarters and check on me. Only sometimes, but you never know. They might turn up now, when I am not in bed. You know how these things work'.

Quite naturally, my wordy, apologetic explanation gave Baldr's curiosity a fair bit of a tickle.

'What nightmares?' he asked, his voice once again hardly louder than the rustle of fallen leaves.

And before I knew it, I found myself telling him everything about my mother's pallid, bloated face and waving hair, and about how she had driven herself to such an end, and about my childhood worries in general, things like trying but failing to accept what my father taught me, and missing the bygone days when the vain, self-satisfied young Justiciar-in-training was my adored big brother... My speech was long and artless and probably barely coherent - but Baldr listened attentively, and when my faltering confession finally trailed of into the night stillness, he said a few words of comfort, which might seem frightfully silly to an adult but were - and still are - very precious to me, like a priceless treasure that has to be stored away in the deepest, farthest troves of the memory and taken out with great caution, only on rare occasions, to be marvelled at and then placed back into mothballs.

When, at long last, I crept back into my bed, it was almost dawn. As I found out later, neither my father nor Ondolemar had been to my room that night, and for once I was thankful that they were not overly caring.

The thought that I now had a friend made me so excited that I could not even doze off during those few brief hours there were left before the cogs and wheels of the Embassy would come into motion and a new day would begin; so I decided to venture into another expedition.

I had thoughtfully recovered the two halves of my broken lockpick and pieced them together with a bit of string, and since merely trying my luck with this pathetic little contraption would be pointless, I thought that perhaps there could be a potion that would increase my chance to pry the lock open. To this task I now dedicated myself, relentlessly monopolizing the very first alchemy lab I had come across, buried beneath a mound of scrolls and books and oddly-smelling ingredients. While I was conducting experiment after experiment, my hair standing on end and my face covered with soot from the little explosions that followed every time I failed to create a potion, I chanced to concoct a draft that seemed to increase my strength; I reproduced the formula several times because I figured it might be of some use to Baldr. The more ingredients I ground away into dust, chasing away the nagging thought that the grown-ups would probably roast me alive for wasting so many rare and valuable reagents, the less focused I became on the goal I had set for myself; the fortify lockpicking potion had slipped to some remote place into the back of my mind, and I became absorbed in the process itself, for what greater fun can an eleven-year-old have than mixing different things together just to see what happens? My ecstatic brewing was interrupted - just as I was about to test the slimy-looking substance which I believed to be a newly discovered invisibility potion - by none other than Ondolemar, who brushed passed me, muttering angrily to himself, hands thrust behind his back and the hood of his brand new robe pulled down so that only the tip of his nose was visible. I immediately abandoned my, for want of a better word, research (cleaning up after yourself can't possibly be a strong point if you grow up surrounded by people who do it for you) and trotted after my brother, trying to get ahead of him and peer into his face.

'Stop following me,' he grunted irritably, broadening his pace.

'I was just wondering what's up with you,' I pouted, still pressing persistently at his heels.

'What's up with me?' he cried out, as he came to an abrupt halt and wheeled round, almost knocking me off my feet, 'I will tell you what's up with me! I ask for a task to perform, any task to prove my devotion to the cause, and what do they do? Assign me to guard some little human wretch, a boy of twelve - of _twelve!_ - whom we keep here with the sole purpose of intimidating his father! Apparently, the soldier who used to watch over the whelp before is needed on a more serious mission! Well, how about _me_ being needed on a more serious mission? I am a Justiciar's son, for gods' sake!'

My heart did a somersault.

'I could guard the kid for you,' I suggested as timidly as I could, taking enormous breaths of air to keep my voice from trembling, 'I mean, this is really simple, isn't it? Even I could do it... I think'.

He glanced at me with suspicion, narrowed eyes glinting beneath his hood, 'Why are you so helpful all of a sudden?'

I mumbled something vaguely friendly, but Ondolemar didn't care to listen.

'I _have_ been given a responsibility...' he mused, biting his lower lip, 'It wouldn't do to just let you do my job... But it is so humiliating, playing watchdog to a human - less than a human, a human child!' he fell silent for a short while and then exclaimed with irritable resignation, 'Oh, all right! I will take _you_ to the kid and then try to eel into a patrol or something... Best not mention it to Father, though'.

I nodded in silent agreement till my neck began to ache.

'There,' Ondolemar said as he pushed me into the fateful room where Baldr was being kept prisoner, 'I will lock you in and take the keys with me, just in case. Don't mess anything up, or Father will have my head. Both our heads... I wonder,' he went on, lingering on the threshold, 'if you have any idea how ridiculous you look... A tiny Thalmor guarding a tiny Nord...'

'_I am not a Thalmor_,' I snapped, regretting my words the moment I uttered them - there was too much anger and resentment boiling in them to pass unnoticed... But my brother had already withdrawn into the corridor, the door clicking shut behind him.

Baldr, who had been watching us in silence, crouching on the cage floor, alert and tense like a beast that senses a hunter, sprung up, clutched the bars in agitation and asked, his voice loud and eager, 'How did you do it?'

'Oh, I have my ways,' I grinned with an air of greatest importance, pulling out another bulky bundle, this time containing mainly my homebrew fortify strength potions.

Baldr gulped down the rather suspicious contents of the bottles I had passed to him with touching obedience, wiping his lips with the back of his hand - a gesture he had probably copied from one of his elders as they treated themselves to good, strong drink in the mead hall. I am not sure that my concoctions were of any practical use to Baldr, but at least he didn't seem to have sprouted horns or an extra arm. Having switched from the potions to a new batch of food, he put forward a rather unexpected suggestion, his mouth full and his eyes laughing, 'Let's play a game'.

'What kind of game?' I asked, with a small frown; our present surroundings did not offer much scoped for tag or hide-and-seek.

'A... story game!' Baldr said, swallowing, his tone like that of a herald or an announcer.

I gave him a blank look.

'Oh, it's a great game!' he assured me eagerly, 'We invented it back in my village. There was a boy, see, who was really sick, and he couldn't get out of his bed - so we came over to his place and sat around him and played the story game... It's lots of fun, like when a bard is telling a story, only you have to invent the heroes and their adventures all by yourself... Let me show you how it's done,' he added, apparently noticing that my look still remained as blank as ever.

I tried as best I could to show that I was all ears. Baldr cleared his throat and began in a slow, dramatic voice, 'Once upon a time there was a Nord warrior called Soren... Tall and strong he was, with long fair hair tied in braids and a scar across his chin; he was clad from head to foot in steel armour, and wielded a battle axe... This is going to be my hero,' he explained, changing the pace of his speech back to normal, 'And he went on a journey in search of fame and adventure, with his faithful companion... Now you make up your hero'.

I scratched my head, not quite up to the task Baldr had set me. The only grown-up warriors I had had relatively close contact with were Thalmor soldiers and wizards, and I couldn't picture one of them travelling side by side with a Nord. At length, I settled on my hero being a Nord too, with strawberry blonde hair, like my own, and a few scars here and there, wearing hide armour, because that was usually the case with the few Nords I had come across, and fighting with an orcish greatsword, because I had once seen one and thought it was pretty goddamn awesome. When it came to inventing a name for him, however, I was at a total loss. I just could not think of any even remotely Nordish-sounding name, and after a few minutes of intense mental activity I finally voiced a faint plea, 'Uh, can my hero be called Baldr... Like you? That's the only Nord name I know...'

My friend granted me his permission and then said, rubbing his hands together, 'And so the heroes began their quest in the plains of Whiterun hold... Have you ever been to Whiterun hold?'

'Well, yeah... And no...' I mumbled sheepishly, 'That is, I travelled across Skyrim, but that was in a carriage, so I didn't get to see much'.

'Well then, close your eyes, and imagine this...'

So began the epic journey of two brave Nords, the tale of which my friend and I spun together, taking turns to describe our heroes' feats in battles with all creatures imaginable. In a matter of a week or so - for Ondolemar, through a bit of cheating, had managed to secure himself a position in a patrol and every day I had to guard Baldr while he was out in the wilderness - our make-believe adventurers had traversed the whole of Skyrim, climbing mountains, pushing through snow drifts with the icy wind slashing mercilessly at their faces, crossing rapid streams and treacherously still moors, trekking through dense pine forests, delving deep into ruins and crypts, and righting all wrongs they came across. It was an exciting journey, with unknown dangers lurking behind every corner and roads packed full with villagers waiting to be saved from a giant or a flock of feral hagravens. We were just planning to move our imaginary quest beyond the borders of Skyrim when it ended, terribly, tragically, and so did the stage of my life when I was called Aurelion.


	3. Run for freedom

'Say, will the D.I.D - you know, damsel in distress - that Soren and Baldr just saved... Will she.. Well... Give them a kiss?'

'Eww... What'd she wanna do that for?'

'Oh, I don't know... They all do that in books'.

'Them must be milk drinker books, then!'

Our argument was interrupted by a loud, imperious knock on the door. Baldr and I froze as we were, him squatting in front of his cage bars and me sitting cross-legged on the floor opposite him, and exchanged a look of mute terror. We kept quiet, not daring as much as to breathe, hoping that whoever was knocking would just get tired and walk away. But the sound went on, persistent, impatient, hammering in our very heads, and when it finally ceased, a voice called out, 'Ondolemar? Ondolemar, what is the meaning of this? Open up this instant!'

My feet grew cold as I recognized the voice as my father's. Bulging my eyes as much as I could to emphasize the stickiness of the situation to Baldr, I moved my lips noiselessly to shape four words, 'We are done for'.

'Answer him,' Baldr whispered, 'I reckon he'll break the door down if you don't'.

It took me several tries to force a barely audible squeak, 'Ondolemar isn't here. He... He is off on a raid or something... And he left me in charge'.

'Aurelion?' my father sounded both angry and incredulous - and even a little amused, 'Your brother actually...? Ah, never mind, I will give him a piece of my mind when he gets back. Now, be a good boy and open the door'.

'I can't,' I whimpered feebly, 'He's taken the key with him. He always does'.

'_Always?_' Father thundered, 'You mean, this has been going on for some time? Now I understand why Naelynn has been praising Ondolemar so much to me! He has been going out on patrols with her! That boy has some cheek, shirking his assigned duties, lying to his superiors and entrusting his task to a child!'

'This brother of yours sure will go far as a Thalmor,' Baldr remarked in a lowered voice, making me giggle in spite of myself.

In the meanwhile there had been a considerable amount of sizzling and crackling going on behind the door; then my father said warningly, 'Stand back, Aurelion. I am going to deal with the door'.

I got to my feet and withdrew a few steps, pressing my back against the farther wall of the room, while Baldr crawled into the most shadowy corner of his cage; with a flash of dazzling blue and a soft, sigh-like sound, the door crumbled away into ashes, and my father stepped inside.

'A bit of a waste, that,' he noted, jerking his head in the direction of the gaping doorway, 'But I am sure that someone with more capacity for menial tasks will see to the door being restored. Now, I assume Ondolemar hasn't left you the cage key either?'

'N-no,' I gulped, my eyes still on the smoking ash pile.

'I was right to insist that they make a master key. But who listens to groundbreaking ideas?' Intimidating as he might be, I never could quite get rid of the impression that at times my father spoke with the sole purpose of hearing the sound of his own voice, 'I will try to cast a spell on the lock, we'll see if it works...'

'Uh, Father...' I piped in meekly, 'Does this mean... That you are setting Baldr free?'

He turned away from the lock, his expression displeased, 'Rule number one, Aurelion: never refer to a prisoner by his name. Beings such as those that we are dealing with do not deserve to have names. And, yes, we are setting him free... in a sense'.

'Will you let him become my real playmate? Pretty please?' I asked eagerly, hopping up and down behind my father's back as he was performing his magical machinations with the lock.

His lips twitched in a smirk that could have been a warning if I hadn't been so foolishly absorbed in a vision of myself and Baldr running hand in hand in the great snowy expanse of Skyrim. 'You don't understand,' he said quietly, swinging the cage door open and squinting at the shadows where Baldr sat, his little crouching figure tense with fearful expectation, 'This is not how such things are done. You see, this little wretch's father has been insolent enough to take his own life in order not to answer our questions'.

Baldr made an odd, choking sound and bit hard into his fingernails, perhaps thinking it dishonourable to openly burst into tears; my father went on, paying no attention to him, 'And with the parent gone, the child is of no further use...'

'Well then, let him go!' I cried out, my heart contracting with amazement at my own boldness, 'You got what you wanted from him, now _let him go!'_

'You still do not understand,' my father sighed, giving me a look of mild pity, as if to show that he, being such a very good parent, was ready to tolerate my insufferable stupidity, 'If he were allowed to return back to his people, he would... tell them of things that should not be mentioned - mindless little creature that he is'.

He let me digest his words so that I could come to the horrible conclusion myself, and turned back to Baldr again, 'Come out, you filthy little human! Come out _now _- don't make me crawl in there and get myself dirty by dragging you out!'

I don't know how I ever brought myself to do it; it was a new, altogether different me that lurched at my father and grabbed desperately at his robes, trying to pull him away from the cage.

'You can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do this!' I bellowed hysterically, giving in to the wild storm that had swelled up inside my heart, 'It's... It's _murder!'_

Speechless with shock, my father attempted to shake me off, but I clung on to him like a mudcrab, pounding his arm with my fist.

'Knock it off, pal,' Baldr said unexpectedly, coming up to my father from his shadowy sanctuary in the corner, 'You'll only make it worse. I always knew they'd kill me, sooner or later. And I am ready to die, because my Da brought me up right'.

_'But I don't want you to die!'_ I wailed, swallowing hot tears, 'You are my friend! I want you to grow up to be a warrior, big and strong and true to his honour - like Soren! I want you to get out of here and see sunshine again! I want you to laugh...'

My father's gloved hand pressed hard against my lips, smothering my cry; I bit at his fingers, but he did not let go - and then my whole body suddenly grew cold and numb, and green circles swam before my eyes... He had used magic to paralyze me.

'You little squirt, how could you rat me out?'

I groaned and opened my eyes. I was in my room, flung carelessly across the bed, and my brother was sitting in a chair by my side; his tone when he spoke to me was, quite surprisingly, not angry - in fact, there was hardly any emotion in it at all.

'They punished me, you know,' he added in a hollow voice, 'Father and the others. Because I had lied to some people to get patrol duty... and because I had allowed you to forge a bond of friendship with that little prisoner. See?' he rolled up his sleeve to expose dark, ugly, swollen burn marks, 'Shock magic. Same as they used to dispose of your little human pal'.

I gasped for breath, my heart pierced by an arrow of bitter cold. 'Were... Were you there... when?'

My whisper was weak, quiet, barely more than a movement of the lips, but he understood.

'Father made me watch,' came the dull, monotonous reply, 'One of the interrogators bared the boy's chest, and pressed his palms against his skin, and before I knew it, there he was. On the floor. Motionless,' Ondolemar swallowed, with great effort, and turned away, his shoulders twitching.

'I was sick,' he breathed chokingly, and I stared at him in silence, for he had never before talked like that in my presence, 'It made me nauseous to look at him. I had never seen a child die before... Even if it was only a human child... Father was so angry... He said I had showed my weakness... And I guess he was right...'

I shifted a little, feeling rushing back to my limbs, stretched out my hand and touched his hunched back with my fingertips. Ondolemar swivelled his head round with a start. The brief moment of brotherly proximity was gone; he was once again the conceited young Altmer in service of the Dominion, with the only difference that he had now had his first lesson in cruelty.

'Go to sleep, Aurelion,' he said sharply, 'I will stay here in case you plan any funny business. Seems to be my lot in life, watching over stupid children...'

I closed my eyes obediently, but soon got bored and opened them again; to my utmost surprise, my bed was standing in the middle of a sunlit birch grove somewhere in what I believed, from Baldr's descriptions, to be the Rift. And he was there, my Nord friend, my best friend forever, standing facing me, rocking backwards and forwards on his heels, eager, impatient. With a loud laugh, I threw aside the bedclothes and sprang up to him. He winked at me and clapped me lightly on the shoulder. 'Tag, you are it!'

I had never had so much fun since the days when Ondolemar and I played together in the garden back at home in Alinor. The day seemed to be endless, the rays sunlight flowing down through the gaps in the tree trunks like honey, and the leaves were falling like little circles of gold and brass, and we were chasing each other in the long, fragrant grass, and catching butterflies, and I felt so happy, so wonderfully happy, that I almost screamed with joy.

'Wanna hear a funny thing?' I asked, as we finally threw ourselves, exhausted, onto the warm, gently breathing ground, and took to picking up small, round pebbles and making them bounce off the surface of a sleepy creek, 'They told me you were dead! Imagine that!'

'Them milk drinkers don't know what they're talking about! I am as alive as can be, and I will stay here and play with you for ever and ever and ever!'

Baldr grinned at me broadly, but as he grinned, his face turned deathly pale, and a large dark mark appeared on the front of his clothes, right over his heart, as if they were a sheet of paper touched by a lit candle. The mark steadily grew larger and larger, and suddenly Baldr burst into flames, bright-blue, lifeless flames, and with a soft, sigh-like sound, just like the cell door at my father's touch, crumbled away into ashes. I crawled up to the pile of embers that had seconds before been my friend and picked up a handful of cold, soft, weightless embers, and let the ash trickle through my fingers in small cascades of bluish-grey, and before I knew it, the greater part of the forest around me faded away into thick white mist, and what was left in my line of sight gradually lost its vibrant colours - and a metallically hard, echoing voice said, 'You see now, he _is_ dead, you silly boy! Just like me!'

My mother had risen from the creek, her face a frozen white mask, her hair billowing in the air. She stretched out her arms towards me, and called out, softly, temptingly, 'Come now, boy, we can all three of us be together, and play, for ever and ever and ever...'

I got hastily to my feet and backed away from her, but she glided up to me, fast noiseless, unstoppable, like the shadow of a storm cloud. Her fingers closed in round my hand, and with a wild, animal-like shriek, I woke up.

'Really, Aurelion, there is absolutely no need to work yourself into a state because of a _human!_ You didn't even see him die, like this weakling here'.

My father must have dropped by to check on me; when I heard his voice, the uncontrollable storm awoke yet again; I bounced upwards and raced, the bed beneath my feet springy like the ground in a marsh, towards the edge next to which he and Ondolemar were seated, and now that my face was more or less level with Father's, I flung my arm back, gathering all my strength, and then brought it forward with a loud 'Slap!'.

'I hate you!' I cried, feeling strangely elated, as if my anger were strong, heady wine, 'I hate you! I hate you! I wish you were dead! I wish all the Thalmor in the world were dead!'

My father's eyes burned bright yellow in the semi-darkness of my room; he rose from his seat and grabbed me tightly by the wrist with one hand, while allowing a small, blindingly blue lightning, curled up like a sleeping snake, swell up in the palm of the other.

_'Don't!'_ Ondolemar screamed, his outburst startling all three of us. While he and Father were struggling, I managed to break free and burst out of the room.

I had never run so fast, or for such a long time, in my entire life. I whizzed along the corridors like a whirlwind set loose, I dashed across the courtyard towards the gates, almost knocking the bewildered guards off their feet. I was lucky - just as I sped towards the ornate bars that blocked my way into the wilderness, the gates opened to let through a party of soldiers escorting a bound prisoner. I rushed past them, giving the poor man a half-crazed smile and bellowing something silly, like 'Long live Talos!', and before anyone could understand what had gotten into me, I was already well on my way to the place I had already tried to reach once, but failed dismally - Solitude.

I ran on and on, till I could no longer feel my legs and my lungs became a raging furnace. I ran almost without stopping, swept by the winter wind - no, I _was_ the wind, raising white, wispy clouds as I passed along snowy slopes - and the northern lights blazed overhead once again.


End file.
